Perhaps because of the ongoing
protests for racial justice in the United States; perhaps because ofthe news of extremist groups who
terrorize, torture, silence, and kill people in parts of Asia and Africa, and,
most recently, in Europe as well, many historians who attended the AHA’s 2015
annual meeting asked: What is the historian’s role in relation to social
justice?

At the
Committee on Women Historians breakfast, Jacqueline Jones argued that
historians should not apologize for their historical work, or for their
commitment to social justice (see Debbie Ann Doyle’s report on the talk in this
issue). Historians can take a more active role in learning to communicate with
journalists, she said, because “a keen understanding of history presents
solutions to problems” that the public should know about. In sharing their
knowledge with members of the media, and consequently with a larger number of
members of the public, historians could make a difference. At the same time,
Jones cautioned that historians “work more deliberately and we are more attuned
to nuance; at times it is not possible to give the media what they want and
stay true to the evidence.”

Jones’s
question about whether historians can in fact combine scholarship with activism
reminds me of John Fea’s book Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past. In this
work Fea admits that the combination of scholarship and activism has a volatile
history, but can be a moral stance nonetheless. He argues effectively that the
work of the historian is fundamental to democracy, and believes that the world
can be changed with the study of even the most obscure of histories.

Fea points
to the tension between historicism—looking at history according to its own
terms—and activism. He writes, “Good scholars of the past must, at some level,
practice historicism. By trying to understand the past on its own terms, the
historian treats it with integrity rather than manipulating it or superimposing
his or her values on it to advance an agenda in the present.” In practicing
historicism, historians must understand and accept that they have no control
over the outcome of their research. They must be open to the possibility that
the truth might not support their cause.

For the
historian, Fea argues, changing the world is a by-product of careful study.
When the historian takes on the role of “a tour guide through foreign
cultures”—cultures from the past—“that has the best potential to transform our
lives and the lives of those around us,” he writes. “It is our engagement with
the otherness of these lost worlds that, ironically, prepares us well for life
in the present.”

When history
is practiced in a responsible manner, Fea argues, it allows us to develop and
acquire virtues that are important in civil society. These virtues are needed
in a democracy but have impact on the world at large. As historians encounter
foreign settings, people, and actions, we develop empathy, even with characters
we might otherwise find repulsive. This skill to empathize is required in civil
society, and without it people become divided. Building community among people
who have different beliefs, backgrounds, and inclinations requires this skill.

When
historians remember that every human has faults and makes mistakes they are
more likely to be compassionate in their study of historical actors, and this
compassion translates into everyday life; actors in our own time are equally
imperfect, and equally worthy of respect and dignity.

Fea further
argues that historians must take into account the viewpoints and actions of
actors who are not traditionally seen as “important”—namely, those who were not
the victors, who were not in the upper classes, and whose voices were
suppressed. At the annual meeting panel “Experiencing Revolutions,” speakers
Wendy Pearlman and Lillian Guerra modeled this. Pearlman talked about her
interviews with Syrian refugees who have been experiencing one type of fear
after another, and asserting their agency and ethical outlooks through protest.
Some said that “they felt like a citizen for the first time” when they
demonstrated. In her talk, Guerra discussed her analysis of essays written by
K–12 Cuban students. She came to interesting conclusions about the role of
education in spreading ideologies and even instilling in young people a will to
die for the revolution.